Kinzua Viaduct, Once the World's Highest Bridge

When it opened in eighteen eighty-two, the Kinzua Viaduct in McKean County was the highest and longest railroad bridge in the world, carrying the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad over a deep Allegheny valley to haul coal, lumber, and oil. It held that record for two years before a taller bridge was completed in France. The original iron structure was rebuilt entirely in steel in nineteen hundred to bear heavier loads, and it served trains until nineteen fifty-nine.

The state bought the bridge in nineteen sixty-three and opened Kinzua Bridge State Park in nineteen seventy. Then in two thousand three, an F-one tornado touched down and toppled eleven of the viaduct's twenty towers. Rather than hide the damage, the park left the collapsed towers where they fell and built a glass-floored skywalk extending from the remaining abutment out over the gorge, opening in two thousand eleven. The wreckage below is part of the story.